


life day truces

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars (Marvel Comics), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Introspection, M/M, Permanent Injury, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, Unresolved Romantic Tension, War is hell
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 12:35:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13434846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: This, too, was scripted, comforting. Perfect and reliable in its every particular. They spoke of inconsequential things and pretended for an hour that they were normal people with normal lives going about their normal business in an entirely normal bar.





	life day truces

Poe took stock of the cantina around him. As dilapidated as ever, it somehow still stood on its own crumbling foundations, much like the rest of the galaxy seemed to be doing despite its best efforts. At the bar, the same droid rolled about behind the counter, serving swill in glasses older than everyone in the room put together probably. A new gouge marred the rounded dome of its dull brass head, but otherwise, it wasn’t so different from how it had been last year. That cheered something in Poe, a small corner of him he didn’t get to indulge often enough in old, familiar things finally reaping its reward, dubious though that reward may have been.

He sighed, his gait a bit unsteady as he took the handful of steps required to enter the cantina proper. His hands tightened at his sides and he willed himself keep from reaching out and brushing his hand along the grimy wall a few feet away. Pain lashed up his leg, burning through his hip and across his lower back. The injury would heal, he knew, mostly. But he’d always have a bit harder time on stairs. In the meantime, he had to make due. And if that meant biting back a hiss as he tried not to fall on his face in the middle of a bar where he hadn’t even started drinking yet, then he’d do exactly that.

 _Wars, man, always trying to kill you,_ he thought, pretending it didn’t bother him.

His eyes cast about for the back of a familiar head at a familiar table in a familiar corner of the room.

He wasn’t disappointed. In this, at least, all was certain. So long as either of them survived this stupid conflict, they’d find their way here. Same day of the galactic year, same hour.

It was the only bit of selfishness Admiral Dameron allowed himself this far down the line. It was too dangerous to traipse about the galaxy otherwise—and on his own, too—especially when he wouldn’t say where he was going or what he was doing and would only concede to take an emergency comlink with him. At first, his aides had argued with him. Even Finn, who knew a thing or two about needing to get the hell out of a place sometimes, had argued that he couldn’t keep pulling this kind of shit, not when—

Not when the First Order was constantly and consistently kicking their asses across the Outer Rim.

Not when supplies dwindled at every turn, seemed to disappear if you looked at them wrong, got used up too quickly and too often no matter how often they scraped and scrounged their way into solvency again.

Finn’d trotted out all the usual arguments. It was dangerous. It was foolish. They needed Poe here, damn it, not out there gallivanting around—

Finn didn’t understand anymore. None of them understood. Even Poe didn’t understand sometimes. It probably was dangerous and foolish and Poe seemed to be needed everywhere at all times. But even so, he would do this one thing. He’d take it between his two hands if he had to. Finn could run the whole thing for one day. Hells, he could run it every day for all Poe cared; he was that kind of leader, earned that kind of trust, proved himself smart and competent and good at leading.

He’d always been a fine soldier.

And Poe… Poe gallivanted. It was what he’d always been best at even if he refrained 486 days out of 487.

He still didn’t even know quite how this particular brand of gallivanting even started. He hadn’t seen the man in months, thought maybe the First Order had finally done him in, fried that pissed-off, shackled brain of his for good. That cybernetic couldn’t have been good for him. Then out of nowhere, an encrypted set of coordinates and a note of only five words. A message and a meeting place and an exchange of some token of information. 

_You’ll want to see this_.

It had, for a short time, been a monthly occurrence, back when they could still afford to pursue every scrap of intel for all it was worth because they had the time, resources, and people to do it. Now that the war had become one of attrition, of the slow slide toward death and loss and failure, Poe could only spare one day, could only send his people after so much. Still. Until the day that Terex stopped coming, gift in hand, Poe would find the will in himself to hope for one key, that one final key, that would solve this mess once and for all.

Somewhere along the way, Terex had become a symbol of hope for him.

Yeah, he was laughing, too.

But Poe risked a day of his life that he shouldn’t have simply because of it anyway. _You’ll want to see this_. Yeah, he did. Every time. Even if it didn’t pan out. He told himself it was Terex who couldn’t ever stop himself from coming back, that Terex was the reason they were here, but that wasn’t really true, was it?

Was it masochism, or something else?

Poe couldn’t say, except that somewhere along the way his stomach twisted at the thought of coming here. Anticipation grew and mutated into something uncontrollable in his gut. A smile he would have rather avoided altogether stole across his face. And approaching the man he’d come to—trust, in a very weird, very specific way, had somehow turned into an appreciated moment of his life. It wouldn’t have been a lie to say he needed this. It embarrassed him that it was Terex who was responsible for that feeling. Likely, Terex would mock him for it, too, if he realized.

A handful more steps brought him the sight that he’d hoped and expected to see and something, something very fragile, released inside of him. The tension bled from his shoulders and the smile that had begun to form broke into a full grin. He would trade back to the old days when he held nothing but contempt for Terex if it meant resetting the clocks, but he was reasonable enough to accept what bits of relief he could still find in the galaxy. 

He wasn’t sure what drew Terex’s attention, but suddenly he turned and even in the dark, smoky atmosphere of the bar, Poe could see the complicated play of emotions in his eyes. His gaze immediately fell to Poe’s shattered, pinned to hell and back and barely functional knee, the unsteady twist of his hip, and his mouth thinned in a displeased frown, but almost as quickly as he’d looked, he lifted his eyes again to Poe’s face and everything was as right as it could be.

He didn’t stand, but he raised his drink and tipped the rim of the glass against his forehead in greeting.

Poe reached the table in not-so-short order. His knuckles whitened under the strain of his weight against the table’s surface as he steadied himself to sit. With a sigh, he leaned back and stretched his leg, careful to avoid kicking Terex in the shin. Letting a wry smile twist his mouth, he gestured for one of the bartender droids and readied his usual order.

But before he could get the words out, the droid who rolled their way dropped a coaster in front of him and placed his drink onto it. The glass was already sweating, which probably meant that it had been ready for a few minutes at the very least. How kind of Terex to remember. How generous of Terex to think of him.

At his age, he was getting predictable.

Maybe this was why Supreme Leader Ren kept getting the better of them. It was the only explanation Poe could think of.

Maybe war was a younger man’s game.

Then again, Kylo Ren wasn’t that much younger than Poe, was he? Maybe all of Poe’s justifications were just a load of bantha shit. Maybe Poe just wasn’t a good enough leader. Or maybe the Supreme Leader somehow fell into competence somewhere along the way. Or perhaps access to credits and weapons and strip-mined resources covered a multitude of sins and it didn’t really matter how smart or good or clever Poe was, there was no beating superior forces, not this time.

“You look awful,” Terex said. Somewhere in the long corridor of years that stretched between them, Terex had lost the careful, clipped accent that had marked him as an Imperial true believer. For a certain generation, the civilized core world mannerisms were prerequisites for success, for duty, for order to spread and flourish. Terex was among them, but he no longer clung to that delusion. Now, his words took on a harsher, less polished edge. You couldn’t quite cut yourself on the tone of his voice, but your skin could bruise under it if you weren’t careful around him.

Poe found he preferred Terex this way. He sounded good with the rough twang of whatever home world sprang him into existence. In another life, he might’ve…

There were a lot of things he might’ve done to a voice like that.

He frowned, good mood evaporating.

“You always did know how to make a man feel good about himself.” Even with about a month’s worth of physical therapy under his belt, Poe couldn’t withhold the pained hiss that followed his every attempt to remain seated with anything approaching grace. Fire raged inside of him, threatened to melt the bits of his hip that weren’t soldered together with heaps of metal. He’d stopped harboring dreams of front-line fighting when he’d taken over as Admiral of the Fleet, but now that he truly couldn’t physically operate an X-wing… 

He shook his head. He came here to forget. To renew his hope in this war. To find something that would hold him together for another year. That he placed that hope in Terex just showed how far they’d all fallen.

“I just want you to keep trusting me,” Terex answered, weary and exaggerated, while Poe was too busy mourning for what they’d all had once upon a time. “If I lie to you now and break that most sacred of bonds, where would we be?”

Poe tried to smile, he really did. The corner of his mouth even lifted in the effort. It got him nowhere a whole lot faster than it usually did. “Someplace better, maybe. Back when you did lie to me, I knew things weren’t so…”

“Kriffed to every hell and back and then some?” Terex’s words came out warm with sympathy, bright with artificial sweetness. He tsked and took a sip of his drink. His mouth pinched as he savored it, as though that might make the swill they drank at this particular establishment more palatable.

Mirroring Terex, he swallowed his own drink—and far more quickly than Terex did. This wasn’t the jet juice Snap still concocted in a backroom somewhere on base that Poe studiously didn’t know about, but it wasn’t far off from it. It burned down the back of Poe’s throat, but he didn’t cough, too used to the red hot ache of it. “Something like that.”

“So,” Terex said, “what happened?”

Poe wasn’t stupid enough to not know exactly what Terex was asking. “This and that. It’s been a long year,” he said, instead of answering. His hand arched through the air, a wishy-washy gesture for an equally wishy-washy answer. “You’re looking good. The sale of information treating you well?”

Terex’s brows furrowed together. “I only sell to you.”

“Terrible business practice. You don’t even charge me.”

Terex’s gaze sharpened and the air pressed against Poe, heavy with expectation in response. And though Poe anticipated the one request he couldn’t fulfill, Terex said nothing for a long moment. A long enough moment that, for the time being, Poe was safe from one more disappointment for just that little bit longer. He was wise enough these days to recognize grace when it slipped passed him in an alleyway and he didn’t take it at all for granted now, tipping his head in acknowledgment. He shouldn’t have prodded, wouldn’t have if he wasn’t so damned relieved to talk to someone who didn’t want to kill him and didn’t expect him to have all the answers to keep others from killing them.

He knew what Terex wanted to say. _Seeing you is payment enough._ He’d said it before, and though it had been a joke, it was less of one than either of them really ought to have admitted to.

“I have other means of getting by,” was all Terex said in response. Which was just as well. Poe wasn’t disappointed.

Poe swallowed and coughed into his shoulder, his stomach a tight, hot knot of nerves. His hip ached something fierce, the hard chair beneath him doing him no favors. Even the liquor couldn’t dull it. The best pain medications in the Rebellion couldn’t touch it. It went deeper than the shattered bone, the torn muscle, the rough, scarred skin one of the med droids had to stitch back into place with its own many-fingered limbs, the old-fashioned way because they were out of the mechnosutures which would have ensured a better, more evenly healed wound. As it was, the unforgiving ropes of tissue would probably bother him until the day he had far, far bigger problems to worry about than his scarred up body.

He almost looked forward to it. At least then it’d all be over, wouldn’t it?

Sounded restful really.

A lull fell over the conversation, seemed to fall over the entire room for a time, a spell cast upon the patrons, trapping the bar in silence for a brief, blessed moment. It felt like a reprieve and one that Poe couldn’t allow himself to take for fear of staying in it forever—or trying to. “So what do you have for me?”

It wouldn’t be anything truly remarkable, of course. There was hope and then there was flat-out delusion. He’d have gotten into contact sooner if it was, but the possibility still mattered, still served its purpose, still buoyed Poe up in ways that nothing else could. The false pretense ruled all and who was Poe to question it? Whatever Terex had would help. It always helped. But it wasn’t a panacea. It wouldn’t cure all that ailed Poe and Finn and their busted, broken Rebellion.

The great and powerful Supreme Leader had taken everything from them, their true leader, most of their fleet, safe quarters.

Terex couldn’t replace even a tiny sliver of that, try as both he and Poe might to make up the difference.

He threw a small, inconsequential square of metal onto the table. All of this for just that tiny little thing. It didn’t seem like a fair exchange. But it was all they had and so Poe swiped it up and tucked it away. A square that size could carry the Death Star plans and no one would have to know it. Small things could pack big punches.

Of course, as soon as he took it back to his slicers, he’d know whatever punch was in this encrypted bit of metal wouldn’t even begin to dent the First Order’s might, but the moments of uncertainty he got to have here made it worth it. What if Terex had found the equivalent of the Death Star plans? What would that even feel like?

“Want another drink?” he asked, instead of the question he really wanted the answer to.

“I wouldn’t say no,” Terex answered, just like he always did.

This, too, was scripted, comforting. Perfect and reliable in its every particular. They spoke of inconsequential things and pretended for an hour that they were normal people with normal lives going about their normal business in an entirely normal bar.

There was a time when Poe hated perfect and reliable things. Now he drew every comfort from them he could. What he would do with perfect and reliable things if they fell into his lap today. Somewhere, General Organa was laughing at him probably. Or outright mocking him. She would have known what to say and how to say it.

The fresh round of drinks arrived quickly, like they always did and Poe lifted his in a toast. _To the general,_ he thought, the bitter taste of bile flooding the back of his throat. “To fucking over the First Order.”

Terex huffed, maybe amused. “To fucking over the First Order,” he repeated, dry. Their glasses clinked together lightly and they both swallowed like they were drinking shots and they sat there, silent, for a long time. They barely looked at one another, but it was still too much, made the skin between Poe’s shoulder blades itch with the need to get out of here for fear he’d—

Poe pushed himself, unsteady, to his feet. Pain arced up his side for his trouble. “Until next time?”

Terex’s hand wrapped around his wrist, palm against the back of Poe’s hand as he held himself up with the help of the wobbly table. “You could stay,” he said, gruff, his voice hewn from rusted metal. “Just a night. Just a few hours…”

Poe’s throat bobbed as he swallowed thickly. He bent forward and brushed his mouth across Terex’s, a shitty, cowardly move that both of them wanted, but neither of them really needed. This wasn’t the time or the place and Poe’d been gone long enough as it was. The hyperspace travel time alone was… If he kissed Terex, he didn’t have to say no with words. This was denial enough. He poured his every frustration, his every desire into it. He didn’t love Terex—and Terex didn’t love him probably—but he loved the uncomplicated past that Terex stood for, what he symbolized, what they were to each other, what they could have been under different circumstances.

Poe could eat Terex alive now. Terex was defeatable. Terex didn’t have the resources to destroy everything Poe cared about. Terex wanted to screw the First Order as much as Poe did. And even if he didn’t love Terex, he certainly loved that about him, too.

The trouble was…

“You know I can’t,” Poe said. pulling his hand free of Terex’s drink-iced touch. His face flushed and he wouldn’t meet Terex’s eyes. “I wish I could.”

Terex’s lips tipped up in a bitter smile. “Maybe next year, huh?”

Poe grinned. It was the least he could do. “If we’re still around.”

This, too, was part of the script that always played out between them.

Poe didn’t like it any more now than he ever did, but it let him turn away and that was the only thing that mattered. Or maybe it didn’t and he just told himself it did. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d fooled himself so spectacularly—

the words, _we are the spark that will light the fire that will burn the First Order down,_ came to mind

—and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

“Take care of yourself, Terex,” he tossed over his shoulder, a parting gift.

And a parting curse.


End file.
